Electric vehicle tourism in North Central Washington

Yesterday at the Pacific Northwest Economic Development Conference I had the pleasure to learn about an exciting new initiative taking place south of the border to make it easy for electric vehicle drivers to travel in North Central Washington. I thought it was so well executed and such an innovative and forward thinking initiative that many of you in other areas could piggy back on their ideas.

More and more people in urban locations, the primary market for many rural tourism destinations, are purchasing electric cars. I learned a lot yesterday from Ron Johnston Rodriguez about the innovation happening in electric vehicles. The market for EV is particularly strong in Seattle. Picking up on the infrastructure needs that EV users have for charging stations, a number of actors have been working together to create EV corridors from the City. This will enable EV users to travel out of the city and explore rural areas with confidence that they can find "fuel" to return.

The corridor is also equipped with signage to illustrate where the EV charging stations are (see below)

Ron described the collaboration that has taken place to pilot the EV corridor for tourism.  The corridor is the World's First EV Corridor. A quote from their website that describes the project says "The three DC Fast Charging stations and accompanying Level 2 stations will allow drivers of appropriately equipped electric vehicles (e.g. Nissan Leafs and Mitsubishi i-MiEVs with fast charging capability) to make the trip between the two regions and become EV tourists. Several hotels in North Central Washington—including Sleeping Lady Resort in Leavenworth and Springhill Suites in Wenatchee—are standing ready to accommodate these pioneering EV tourists with free charges for hotel guests at their on-site Level 2 charging stations. In addition, several other Level 2 charging stations in Wenatchee are at the ready including two behind the Convention Center and two at Stevens Pass Ski Area."

To pilot the corridor and make sure it works, the partnership invited 12 EV users to travel the route and use the charging stations. This just happened last weekend and according to Ron, it was a great success. As demand for the stations increases and people can see the opportunities associated to it, both from the demand and the supply side, I am sure that expansion will happen. What I so appreciated about Ron and the project was the "can do attitude" and collaboration that took place to make this happen. There are always enough nay sayers in the room who can find fault or problems with every innovative idea and that is certainly the case with the EV movement. But if we don't take risks and try, we will never be able to do what is natural to humans - evolve, enhance and adapt. 

After the session I had a great lively chat with Ron and said I had the perfect tag line for them "Recharge your batteries here" getting at the opportunity to get out of the urban madness for awhile and recharge not only EV batteries but our human batteries as well in great rural settings. He laughed. As I had done a talk on amenity development as the NEXT approach for economic development that am, I told him I could also see how something like this would create a positive impression on visitors to view the region as "with it", "innovative" and "hip", all descriptors that would be attractive to people considering relocating or investing in the area.

Well done Washington, kudos to you all. I wish you the best of success with this and will share your work with others widely.